Lost Cause
by UberNerd121
Summary: Savy has earned the right to confront her biggest adversary... or at least, she would be able to if anything made sense.


Savy SL2 braced herself for landing as her space cruiser approached solid Earth. Outside, she saw nothing but sprawling grass fields painted gray by the moonless night. This was the place... at least, she hoped it was. Ever since she first joined the Junior Rangers, Savy had dreamed of this moment.

This time, she had a plan to bring Nos-4-a2 down. Of course, she had worked through a lot of the plan already. It had taken her years to get this far ‒ everything concerning the Energy Vampire seemed to be shrouded in several layers of classification. If this didn't work out, she was facing serious consequences. That had made things much more difficult, since she had originally wanted to find Nos-4-a2 with her whole team beside her, but wasn't willing to endanger the rest of their careers.

It had been a tough decision considering how confident Savy felt. After reviewing everything, she was certain that Nos-4-a2 had somehow managed to trick the system into registering him as a reformed villain. It would give the slippery Energy Vampire the perfect chance to run away to the edge of galactic nowhere and run his base of operations undisturbed. Knowing him like she did, Savy knew there couldn't be any way his case file was correct. How could the monster responsible for so much terror be reformed? She'd fought him herself ‒ in fact, she'd come pretty close to finishing him off. Now he was supposed to be under planet arrest on good behavior?

During her years in the academy, the only thing that got her through the grueling training was the thought of bringing villains like Nos-4-a2 to justice. From the moment she gained rookie status, she scoured every database she could to find information on the Energy Vampire's whereabouts, always coming up empty. She had been promoted to a full Ranger before she uncovered the high-security Shiv Katall files, and though she doubted he would actually be living at whatever location he fed to the system, it was her only lead. She packed her bag with high-tech stealth gear so the Energy Vampire wouldn't be able to sense her if he was around.

Savy lept out of the cruiser's hatch and into the waist-high grass. She left her helmet up, a shock of her navy blue hair resting on her forehead. She couldn't afford to take time acclimating to Earth's thick atmosphere, but she could feel the breeze through her form-fitting Pulsar suit. She opened a panel on her right wrist to check her positioning system. The reported address was just over the crest of the hill before her. Chills ran up her spine as she walked, her eyes shining, her breath becoming quick and heavy. As she hiked up the slope, a spire gradually came into view atop a ghostly white tower. Her heart jumped into her throat ‒ maybe he lived here after all. It only seemed more likely as she drew closer and closer, more of the mansion coming into her view. As she reached the top of the hill, the only thing that gave her pause for thought were the elaborate gardens making a wide circle around the base of the structure. Nos-4-a2 was notorious for hating plant life, but she wouldn't let that stop her. In fact, it only made her more sure he was inside: the gardens were probably meant to throw off anyone who got this close to finding him.

Passing through a gap in the outer wall of hedges, she silenced her steps in the grass next to the gravel path and wound closer and closer to the outer wall of the mansion. As quietly as she could, she took a tablet out of her pack and activated the radar, skirting the footpath against the wall. Her heart pounded. _Nos-4-a2 was certainly there._

It took a moment for her vision to clear enough to notice that he wasn't alone. The scanner registered at least six other robots and a powerful security system. Savy picked up her pace a bit without thinking. Were they prisoners, slaves, or allies? She couldn't shake the thought that whoever they were, they hadn't been with him to begin with. They could be somebody's friends, or siblings, or parents...

She broke into a jog beside the path, her eyes trained on her radar, making sure that she stopped to duck under the windows as she came close to the room Nos-4-a2 occupied. Hands trembling, she slipped her bag off her shoulder, taking out a set of sensory equipment. Savy was sitting in a flower bed not thirty feet from the Energy Vampire. She picked out the microphone and gingerly reached up to press it against the glass, waiting until the blood stopped rushing in her ears before she put on the headset.

His voice still made her veins turn to ice. The accent of the strange, overlapping tones hadn't changed since the last time she heard it. " _Come closer, little one._ "

Her gut lurched. Was she listening to a feeding? Savy made sure she was recording, determined to take back enough evidence to make up for the fact that she broke the law in order to get it.

" _No._ "

Savy's heart skipped a beat. What? Was that whoever Nos-4-a2 had been addressing? It sounded like a robot, but how could that be possible? What robot could have opposed the creature responsible for overpowering and destroying so many machines before it?

Nos-4-a2's voice came again, " _Really, you're taking up most of the couch, and the movie's starting soon. There's hardly any room._ "

" _You're going to have to move me, then._ "

Savy stared, unseeing, at the white wall in front of her. She heard a gentle scraping and clinking of fabric and metal, laughter, and a short sigh. " _There, and isn't this more comfortable?_ "

Savy couldn't help herself. What the _hell_ could possibly be going on? That couldn't really be Nos-4-a2, could it? She chanced a peek over the windowsill, keeping her faith in the cover of darkness. It looked like a living room, which didn't help her make any more sense of the situation. She saw the Energy Vampire sitting in an overstuffed sofa, holding a white probe in his lap and facing a large holographic projection of a movie's opening credits. As if on cue, the other robots she'd registered on her scanner started to come into the room, but they couldn't have looked any less like prisoners or slaves. There was one robot identical to the one in Nos-4-a2's lap with blue eyeforms; a yellow unit on treads with optics like a pair of polished silver binoculars; a smaller, white, cube-shaped robot with treads and glowing blue lenses in its binocular optics; a humanoid robot with yellow eyeforms in its black visor; and a short, hovering probe frighteningly similar to Nos-4-a2. It looked like... a _family_.

The last robot made a face at Nos-4-a2 and the probe in his lap. " _Can you not be gross tonight?_ "

" _That depends. Does this count?_ " the Energy Vampire turned the robot in his lap to place an overdramatic kiss on her visor, drawing laughter from the other probe and the yellow unit, while the three smaller robots gagged and sat as far away as possible. Savy gaped like a fish out of water, a million thoughts going through her head and none of them quite connecting. Her mind flooded with memories of Nos-4-a2 during their last encounter, a personification of feral and mechanical fury. Had somebody taken the empty shell of Nos-4-a2 and programmed another personality into it as some sort of divine prank?

She had to do something... talk to someone... suddenly, her feet were carrying her back to her cruiser as fast as she could go. There was only one person she could think of who might know something, or at least sympathize with her, someone who had enough experience with Nos-4-a2 to understand why she had risked so much to find him.

Savy stumbled into her cruiser and activated the communication panel, punching a code into the board. There were only a few tones before a robot with a cylindrical, golden head and optics like purple goggles answered, a stiff, silver mustache bolted to his face. "Savy? Where have you been? Your crew hasn't seen you in days!"

The young ranger was still catching her breath as the words tumbled from her mouth. "What do you know about Nos-4-a2? Like, where he is right now?"

XR's face contorted into a scowl. "Knowing anything about him is too much for my taste. Why do you ask?"

"Do you know a-anything about Shiv Katall?"

"...Savy, I don't know where you heard that name, but you'd be much better off forgetting about it. It's way above your paygrade. I know you have a history with Nos-4-a2, but we don't know anything about his current whereabouts. Is that clear?"

"Sir, please, I ‒ I found him, I'm on Earth, I don't understand!"

Something in the robotic ranger's expression softened at the tone of her voice. "I know. Now, listen... if you swear to me that you'll leave that planet right away and never tell anyone what you've found out, I'll tell you whatever you want to know. For now, keep in mind that there haven't been any reports concerning Nos-4-a2 in years. As far as the Galactic Alliance is concerned, he's dead. Make your way back out as soon as possible."

"That's ‒ that's it?"

"For now, yes. It's not hard to guess what you went out there to find, but you won't have any luck. You're risking a lot more than you know just by being out there."

"...Yes, sir. I'm sorry."

"Fine, but I expect you to report back as soon as possible. Captain out."

Savy, numb, activated the ship and turned on the autopilot. She collapsed into the chair at the main controls and buried her face in her hands, wondering blankly at the tears that pooled in her palms.

* * *

 **A/N:** What do you think is more likely? 1) Savy was so careful and well prepared that she managed to avoid super-security-system Quinn's detection, or 2) Quinn was watching Savy very carefully the whole time and just wanted to see what would happen next.

I'm low-key obsessed with the idea of someone seeing/hearing Nos-4-a2 and assuming the worst only to find out he's a major domestic dork. I've thought and written about a similar scenario many times, but this is the one I'll give you. At the same time, I struggle a little with trying to make sense of Nos-4-a2's situation and how people he used to know would respond to him now. In the cartoon, he's a villain. It's funny. You know he's not going to win, you're just there to hear his one-liners and banter before the good guys take him down. My problem is trying to translate that to the real world. Even if his acts were taken relatively lightly in the show, he was the robot equivalent of a serial killer. I have to specify "robot equivalent" because though they are widely treated as equals, robots are subject to different laws, and Nos-4-a2 never caused permanent harm to an organic creature. If any of his victims were found (and many were), they could be restored, but that doesn't erase the fact that he killed them. He made Savy an orphan (again), even if it was only temporary. That's not something she'll ever forget, and though Nos is able to adjust to domestic life with the help of Two, his past life haunts him to the end of his days.

On a lighter note, I wanted to pay homage to that one episode where Zurg tricks Buzz into thinking he was worm-holed into the future, where he sees a plaque in memoriam of Commander Booster, President Nova, and XR... with a mustache. Like, Zurg probably didn't think Buzz would believe XR would amount to anything more than just getting a mustache tacked onto his face. I can't for the life of me get a screencap, but it's basically the same one Commander Nebula has.


End file.
